Pain
by moreromanthandane
Summary: It has been 1,000 days since Sasuke has left, and the pain is becoming too much for Naruto to bear.


1,000

1,000. 1,000 painful, tortured days of Naruto's heart being slowly ripped out of his chest as it was replaced with the black hole that tormented him during those dark, lonely nights when he wondered why he was alive. 1,000 days since he had left, severing his ties with Konoha, with Naruto. 1,000. Naruto grimaced as he cursed number escaped his lips and entered the world, adding just a little more filth to the already grimy depths of pain, sadness, and loss.

Naruto was no more than a shell of the once lively, optimistic being he used to be. He wasn't, in essence, there. He was still, of course, alive; he smiled, laughed, cried, put on a façade of feeling when his only sensation was the dull, throbbing ache in his chest. There were only two things he desired. To feel alive, to feel like life once again had some semblance of meaning, instead of the barren landscape it had become, where each day was a struggle to get through with, to be over with. White scars crossed haphazardly across his wrists, a desperate attempt to feel sensation. But even as he grit his teeth in pain, watching the red jewels trickle down his shacking hand, it was not true pain he felt. He did, of course, technically feel pain, but it was a detached kind of pain that felt superficial, fake. Even the pain in his chest, which had once been torturingly sharp, had dulled to a throbbing ache, a mere shadow of what it used to be like the rest of his being.  
He systematically, robotically, went through the movements of daily living. Get up, get dressed, eat, comb hair, brush teeth, go on mission, whatever movements were required of him that particular day. Pretend to be alive, pretend to feel something other than the throbbing in your chest, which was really more of emptiness than a throbbing. He told himself this as he went through the motions of the day, attempting to show the hyper, optimistic Naruto he used to be. And, with practice and time, he didn't really have to think about doing that anymore. He could detach himself from living; separate his mind from his body, and drift in the sea of dismal thoughts which occupied his consciousness,  
And if he knew how much pain he was causing Naruto, would he return? Would he feel mercy for the one person who still, in some sense, loved him? Or would he scoff at Naruto's torture, mocking his twisted feelings of pain and nothingness? Naruto could imagine him doing just that. If he had been cruel enough to leave him in the first place, then he was certainly cruel enough to stay away and worsen Naruto's state. This thought had slowly crushed Naruto's thoughts, worsening his condition until there was nothing left, no hope of a long-lost love dramatically returning, no hope of forgiveness. He had long ago realized that life wasn't like what the books said. No one had a truly happy ending. But of course there were those with totally, utterly, miserable conclusions to their excuse for an existence.

Naruto carefully, fingered the sharp kunai, first pressing it to his wrist softly, then slowly increasing the pressure, until drops of blood swelled at the surface of the wound. Normally, he would push just a little harder, then stop in failure as the physical pain did nothing to give him more of a feeling, a life. But this time, he pressed harder, harder, with a maniacal obsession until blood was spewing out of his wrist onto the floor, his clothes, everything in the disorder around him. He watched the blood flow with an almost perverted fascination, smiling wickedly as he realized the consequence of his actions. He was loosing far too much blood to come out of this event alive, or as alive as he could pretend to be in his current state of mind. But he didn't mind. He was almost happy this way, as happy as he had been since Sasuke left, abandoning him, leaving him with noting. He was almost surprised as he comprehended that he had thought the forbidden name, the name that had become taboo in his mind and all around him in the outside world. Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke. Now that he was going to leave it all behind, there was no consequence for thinking the name of the one person he had loved with all his heart. And as his vision dimmed, he hoped that Sasuke would know what had happened to him, and feel remorse for the pain that he had caused Naruto, the pain he had caused everyone he had left behind.


End file.
